Climate Change: Durban Conference

Lord Lawson of Blaby Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I refer to the letter by the Secretary of State in today’s Guardian because he clearly spells out the Government’s aim at Durban this year. He said:

“The UK would like to see a global treaty signed straight away but the reality is that some of the biggest economies, both developed and developing, are not yet ready. We aim at Durban to reach agreement on the need for a new treaty and to set out a timetable for its negotiation, concluding no later than 2015”.

Developing countries are essential to hitting that target and many of those countries are affected by climate change. In the negotiating process, the relationship between rich and poor countries has sometimes been out of kilter and there has been an imbalance, which is why the Government have taken two specific actions to address this. First, the advocacy fund, which was launched by Andrew Mitchell in September, provides support and training to negotiators from those countries. Secondly, the UK is very active in the Cartagena dialogue.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that in the absence of an agreement at Durban of the kind that she described, Her Majesty's Government will suspend all their unilateral decarbonisation targets post-2020, which damage our competitiveness and threaten our economic recovery to no conceivable purpose?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

It is a great privilege to be asked a question by my noble friend. I would like one day to be able to provide an answer that will not disappoint him, but I think that on this occasion I will have to. The Government are very committed to achieving the targets that I have already outlined and want to show leadership in this area. The Government are not signing up immediately to Kyoto 2 and want to make sure that before they commit to that, all countries are signed up to and agree to the need for the 2-degree target.